U-Haul Economics

One popular way to compare the relative economic conditions between pairs of U.S. cities in the continental U.S. at any given time is to see which direction a one way U-Haul truck rental is more expensive. U-Haul rates are highly demand sensitive so the more imbalanced one way traffic is between a pair of cities, the more the rates diverge. Presumably when more people are moving from A to B, than from B to A, B has a stronger economy than A, and it costs more to rent a truck from A to B than from B to A.

I plugged a few simple scenarios in the the U-Haul website looking for quotes to/from Denver and the following three cities for a 10' truck on departing on October 30 2009: Chicago, New York and San Francisco. The results were interesting and painted a relatively favorable picture of the Denver economy.

Den to Chi: $413
Chi to Den: $1438

Den to NYC: $1333
NYC to Den: $1582

Den to SF: $744
SF to Den: $1009

Obviously this is hardly a full sample across truck sizes, days of the week, seasons, or broader time periods but it does indicate that Denver appears to be doing relatively well economically particularly compared to the Windy City.